Porkchop

Porkchop is an English compound food name combining pork (from Old French porc, Latin porcus, meaning pig) and chop (cut of meat). As a pet name it belongs to the beloved tradition of giving animals absurdist food names that are too ridiculous not to work.

Porkchop is a name that commits completely to its own ridiculousness and is all the better for it. There is a deep joy in calling a pet by a name this specific and this unexpected — it signals an owner with a genuine sense of humor and zero pretension. The name gained cultural traction from Doug, the 1990s Nickelodeon cartoon, where Porkchop is the beloved pet dog of the main character. For real-world pets, Porkchop tends to belong to dogs with round, food-adjacent charm: a plump basset hound, a happy sausage-shaped dachshund, any animal who seems like they were named in a moment of pure delight.